Human hair and skin become soiled due to its contact with the surrounding environment and from the sebum secreted by the scalp. The soiling of hair and skin causes it to have a dirty feel and an unattractive appearance.
Shampooing cleans the hair by removing excess soil and sebum. However, shampooing can leave the hair in a wet, tangled, and generally unmanageable state. Once the hair dries, it is often left in a dry, rough, lusterless, or frizzy condition due to removal of the hair's natural oils.
A variety of approaches have been developed to alleviate these after-shampoo problems. One approach is the application of hair shampoos which attempt to both cleanse and condition the hair from a single product.
In order to provide hair conditioning benefits in a cleansing shampoo base, a wide variety of conditioning actives have been proposed. However, including active levels of conditioning agents in shampoos may result in rheology and stability issues, creating consumer trade-offs in cleaning, lather profiles, and weigh-down effects. Additionally, the rising costs of silicone and the petroleum based nature of silicone have minimized silicone's desirability as a conditioning active.
Based on the foregoing, there is a need for a conditioning active which can provide conditioning benefits to hair and skin and can replace, or be used in combination with silicone, or other conditioning actives, to maximize the conditioning activity of hair care compositions. Additionally, there is a desire to find a conditioning active which can be derived from a natural source, thereby providing a conditioning active derived from a renewable resource. Numerous conditioning actives derived from a natural source have been used in hair and skin care compositions. However, due to the hydrophobic nature of these actives, their strong interactions with the micellar surfactant system cause product instability, such as viscosity reduction and phase separation. Consequentially, it is generally difficult to formulate meaningful levels of hydrocarbon based natural conditioning actives to provide significant benefits from rinse off applications. There is a desire to enhance the formulation flexibility and the deposition of these conditioner actives to provide consumer noticeable benefits.
Therefore, there is also a desire to find a conditioning active that is both derived from a natural source and leads to a stable product comprising a micellar surfactant system.